Setting up mail servers

[Coco]

I think I've mostly managed to setup a mail server, I can send mail just fine, and I've got dovecot going for pop access even. The problem is I can't recieve anything unless it's sent from an account on the server itself.

On the server I can send an e-mail to username@ipaddress and it goes through just fine. But if I go to another computer and do the same thing it will never recieve it. I also have a small issue with pop access. I mean it works fine if I use evolution or something from the server itself, but yet again if someone outside the computer trys to use it, it just doesn't work.

[Dolda2000]

Sounds like you might have a firewall running that's blocking those programs. Check your firewall settings and see to it that ports 25 and 110 are let through.

Btw., you really should use IMAP instead of POP. ;-)

[Coco]

Both are going.

At least I think both are going.

As far as the firewall walls goes I thought I covered that base when I did "service iptables stop" and it still didn't work. Or am I wrong that, that would be a good way to check to make sure it's not the firewall?

[Dolda2000]

Well, in that case it almost sounds like a network error to me. Can other computers access anything at all on your computer? Do they get a Connection Refused message if they connect to a port which isn't supposed to be open?

[Coco]

As far as I know, yes, other computers can access stuff on the linux box.

All I've really done from a remote computer is ping and ssh and it works fine.

I just now quickly setup vsftp as well and I can ftp into it without a problem as well.

I sorta thought it was something like I needed to set it to listen for incoming connections. Although the only setting i found like that was in dovecot.conf and I have it set like this.

# "[::]" listens in all IPv6 interfaces, but may also listen in all IPv4
# interfaces depending on the operating system. You can specify ports with
# "hostort".
imap_listen = *
pop3_listen = *

Is there some other settings like that? I've basicly just been turning stuff on since it's fedora core2 and most things are already there for me.

[Dolda2000]

OK, so if you try, from another computer, to telnet to port 25, 110 or 143, what kind of response do you get in that case?

[Coco]

Port 25 can't open a connection to the Host.

Port 110 and 143 both make a connection and say dovecot is ready.

Hmmm, you know, I think pop actually works. I just have a problem with the smtp setup right now and outlook moans because it tries it first.

Thanks for the help man. I've got a few ideas on how to fix smtp myself and I think it'll work out. Thanks for the help, you really pointed me in the right direction.

[Dolda2000]

If you're using sendmail, then it's probably because most distros only make it listen to the loopback interface by default. Just change the sendmail config to make it listen to 0.0.0.0 instead of 127.0.0.1.

[Coco]

Yeah, that was my issue.

I actually got that working now.

Maybe you can help me with this one last issue though.

It currently works fine, except it won't recieve e-mails unless authenticated. I get this error (PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 10): 550 5.7.1 <username@servername>... Relaying denied. Proper authentication required.) I need it to be able to recieve e-mail from anyone. Do you know how I can just turn that off?

I'm just looking through the sendmail config file. I've looked through sendmail.mc and i can't figure out what I've got to change so that it doesn't require authentication.

[Dolda2000]

That's not an SSL problem -- it's complaining about the lack of SMTPAUTH authentication, not SSL negotiation.

Usually, it only complains about the lack of SMTPAUTH authentication when you try to relay to an external server, however. What exact form do you use for the e-mail address (I assume it's not really "servername")?

You'll have to add all the domain names that sendmail will treat as local delivery to the /etc/mail/local-host-names file.